For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons.

Sometimes these optional features involve aesthetics or comfort, like premium seating, fancy lighting or extra bathrooms. But other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the plane’s operations.

Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesia’s Lion Air, have opted not to buy them — and regulators don’t require them. Now, in the wake of the two deadly crashes involving the same jet model, Boeing will make one of those safety features standard as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again.

… Boeing’s optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another.

Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy.

Attorneys for New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and more than a dozen other defendants charged in a Florida prostitution sting filed a motion to stop the public release of surveillance videos and other evidence taken by police.

Attorneys filed the motion Wednesday in Palm Beach County court. The State of Florida does not agree with the request, according to the filing.

In the motion, the attorneys asked the court to grant a protective order to safeguard the confidentiality of the materials seized from the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, and “in particular the videos, until further order of the court.”

Two years in, White House aides are dismayed to discover the president likes lobbing pointless, nasty attacks at people like George Conway and John McCain

But the saga has left even White House aides accustomed to a president who bucks convention feeling uncomfortable. While the controversies may have pushed aside some bad news, they also trampled on Trump’s Wednesday visit to an army tank manufacturing plant in swing state Ohio.

“For the most part, most people internally don’t want to touch this with a 10-foot pole,” said one former senior White House official. A current senior White House official said White House aides are making an effort “not to discuss it in polite company.” Another current White House official bemoaned the tawdry distraction. “It does not appear to be a great use of our time to talk about George Conway or dead John McCain. … Why are we doing this?

When Mr. Trump was running for president, he promised to personally stop American companies from shutting down factories and moving plants abroad, warning that he would punish them with public backlash and higher taxes. Many companies scrambled to respond to his Twitter attacks, announcing jobs and investments in the United States — several of which never materialized.

But despite Mr. Trump’s efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritizing their balance sheets over political backlash.

“I don’t think there’s as much fear,” said Gene Grabowski, who specializes in crisis communications for the public relations firm Kglobal. “At first it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that’s what the business community is doing.”

There’s no specific stipulation that Milo must be heard, so it could be worse

President Trump is expected to issue an executive order Thursday directing federal agencies to tie research and education grants made to colleges and universities to more aggressive enforcement of the First Amendment, according to a draft of the order viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The order instructs agencies including the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Defense to ensure that public educational institutions comply with the First Amendment, and that private institutions live up to their own stated free-speech standards.

The order falls short of what some university officials feared would be more sweeping or specific measures; it doesn’t prescribe any specific penalty that would result in schools losing research or other education grants as a result of specific policies.

Tech companies say that it is easier to identify content related to known foreign terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda because of information-sharing with law enforcement and industry-wide efforts, such as the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a group formed by YouTube, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter in 2017.

On Monday, for example, YouTube said on its Twitter account that it was harder for the company to stop the video of the shootings in Christchurch than to remove copyrighted content or ISIS-related content because YouTube’s tools for content moderation rely on “reference files to work effectively.” Movie studios and record labels provide reference files in advance and, “many violent extremist groups, like ISIS, use common footage and imagery,” YouTube wrote.

The cycle is self-reinforcing: The companies collect more data on what ISIS content looks like based on law enforcement’s myopic and under-inclusive views, and then this skewed data is fed to surveillance systems, Bloch-Wehba says. Meanwhile, consumers don’t have enough visibility in the process to know whether these tools are proportionate to the threat, whether they filter too much content, or whether they discriminate against certain groups, she says.

Two mystery litigants citing privacy concerns are making a last-ditch bid to keep secret some details in a lawsuit stemming from wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s history of paying underage girls for sex.

Just prior to a court-imposed deadline Tuesday, two anonymous individuals surfaced to object to the unsealing of a key lower-court ruling in the case, as well as various submissions by the parties.

Both people filed their complaints in the New York-based 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, which is overseeing the case. The two people said they could face unwarranted speculation and embarrassment if the court makes public records from the suit, in which Virginia Giuffre, an alleged Epstein victim, accused longtime Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell of engaging in sex trafficking by facilitating his sexual encounters with teenage girls. Maxwell has denied the charges.

Rescue teams in Mozambique are struggling to reach the thousands of people stranded on roofs and in trees and urgently need more helicopters and boats as post-cyclone flood waters continue to rise.

Rescue workers, military personnel and volunteers are rushing to save thousands of Mozambicans before flood levels rise further, but with four helicopters, a handful of boats and extremely difficult conditions, have only been able to save about 413 so far.

“I don’t even know if we’ve made a dent. There are just so many people. The scale is huge. We’re busy doing the best we can,” said Travis Trower from Rescue South Africa, adding that a lot of people had been washed away but those still alive, whom he had seen from helicopter flights, were in a very bad state.

More than 400 sq kilometres (150 sq miles) in the region are flooded, according to satellite images taken by the EU, and in some places the water is six metres (19ft) deep. At least 600,000 people are affected, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ranging from those whose lives are in immediate danger to those who need other kinds of aid.

About 40 percent of the District’s lower-income neighborhoods experienced gentrification between 2000 and 2013, giving the city the greatest “intensity of gentrification” of any in the country, according to a studyreleased Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

The District also saw the most African American residents — more than 20,000 — displaced from their neighborhoods during that time, mostly by affluent, white newcomers, researchers said. The District and Philadelphia were most “notable” for displacements of black residents, while Denver and Austin had the most Hispanic residents move. Nationwide, nearly 111,000 African Americans and more than 24,000 Hispanics moved out of gentrifying neighborhoods, the study found.

In an essay accompanying the study, Sabiyha Prince of Empower DC said the city “rolled out the proverbial red carpet” for tens of thousands of new residents in the past five years. But the new dog parks, bike lanes, condominiums and pricey restaurants that followed, she said, are not viewed as improvements by long-term residents, who can feel isolated because of losing neighbors, social networks and local businesses. Prince, an anthropologist, said longtime Washingtonians tell stories of “alienation and vulnerability in the nation’s capital.”

i asked Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova if she supports russians’ right to satirise their leaders and laugh at president putin if they wish. she looked mystified. “We do not have this tradition.”

This says something about the Democratic Party’s relationship to Israel right now

The liberal group MoveOn is calling on Democratic presidential candidates to skip this year’s AIPAC policy conference, citing its links to the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu and charging that AIPAC has flirted with Islamophobia.

The move underscores a growing willingness on the Democratic left to criticize Israel and its staunchest Washington supporters, particularly since freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) bashed supporters of Israel in terms widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

“It’s no secret that that AIPAC has worked to hinder diplomatic efforts like the Iran deal, is undermining Palestinian self-determination, and inviting figures actively involved in human rights violations to its stage,” said Iram Ali, Campaign Director at MoveOn Political Action, in a statement provided first to POLITICO. Ali said the move should “give a clear insight to 2020 candidates on where their base stands instead of prioritizing lobbying groups and policy people who rarely step outside of D.C.”

What would presidential campaigns look like without the electoral college?

Benjamin Hart3:33 PM

Today, Eric published an exhaustive and definitive answer to the question: “do any of the arguments for preserving the electoral college make any sense?” The answer was “nope.” We all agree that this system is nonsensical, and so, by large margins, does the public. It’s been almost 20 years since Bush V. Gore; why has it taken national Democrats so long to start rallying around its abolishment?

Ed Kilgore3:36 PM

Because it’s very hard to do. Plus, we’ve had a second 2000-type disaster.

Eric Levitz3:40 PM

Well, I don’t think that Warren is the first Democratic presidential candidate to call for its abolition. And obviously, at the state level (largely Democratic) governments have been working to nullify it via the National Popular Vote Election Compact. But I do think that the events of the past decade – in which the 2010 wave election enabled Republicans to gerrymander the living daylights out of the House, the movement of rural, white working class voters out of the Democratic Party inflated the GOP’s advantage in the Senate, and Trump’s strength in the Midwest enabled him to win the presidency while receiving 2 million fewer votes – has made progressives more acutely aware of how much they have to gain from making our governing institutions more small-d democratic.

Ed Kilgore3:42 PM

Yeah, I agree the Electoral College is increasingly viewed as part of a whole set of anti-democratic–and anti-Democratic–institutions.

Benjamin Hart3:44 PM

As you said, the National Popular Vote Election Compact is gaining steam, blue state by blue state — though it’s still a long way off from reaching the threshold necessary to overrule the electoral college. Let’s say we’re in a situation where it’s actually foreseeable that the old system could go down. Which of the (flawed) arguments will Fox News try to scare their viewers with? Will it just be “Democrats are trying to rig our perfect Constitutional system to their advantage?”

@LindseyGrahamSC: “The desire to abolish the Electoral College is driven by the idea Democrats want rural America to go away politically. “

Ed Kilgore3:46 PM

I think they’ll lead with the small-state argument. It’s important, since some small states (right now, Delaware) will need to go along to pass the National Popular Vote Compact.

Eric Levitz3:46 PM

That said, I think if/when the compact passes, it will be with strong bipartisan support. There’s a decent chance that within a decade, Texas becomes a 52 percent blue state. The conservatives’s advantage in the Senate is firm. The Electoral College is a much weirder beast, and it’s not actually clear that the GOP will be well-served by it forever.

Ed Kilgore3:47 PM

Well, recently, it’s become more partisan. The only reason there’s been sustained momentum is due to activity in states (like Colorado) whose legislatures flipped from R to D control.

Eric Levitz3:47 PM

If Democrats automatically win TX, CA, and NY each cycle, then abolishing the Electoral College might actually be in the GOP’s self-interest.

Ed Kilgore3:49 PM

Yeah, that’s true. But TX is a long way from being automatically blue.

Eric Levitz3:49 PM

Somewhat ironically, the EC does effectively give more representation to places with undocumented immigrants in presidential elections than the popular vote would.

Benjamin Hart3:44 PM

Let’s say the electoral college was abolished tomorrow. What would be the most obvious change to the way national campaigns are run? Is the fear that candidates would be hanging out in California and New York the whole time justified in any way?

Ed Kilgore3:58 PM

There’d be a cost-benefit analysis that would guide candidate time and media spending, just like there is now.One major shift I could see is much less preoccupation with the small number of competitive small states (or in the case of Nebraska and Maine, districts with a single EV). But Wyoming and Alaska get no attention now, and still wouldn’t.

There would be a lot more attention than now paid to non-competitive large states like NY and CA and IL, without question. But that is, after all, where more people live. (edited)

Eric Levitz4:02 PM

Yeah. I mean, currently, almost all campaigning occurs in a little more than a handful of states. So, one of the only things we can be 99% sure of is that the national popular vote would bring more people and places into the campaign

Ed Kilgore4:03 PM

It would totally change, or maybe even abolish, the idea of “battleground states,” I suppose. You could argue also that it would intensify the shift from persuasion to mobilization strategies for winning elections.Competitive states generally would get less attention that they do today, and their swing voters a lot less attention.

Benjamin Hart4:04 PM

Sounds great to me! I, for one, would love to be inundated with general election ads

“I remember when a man named Dukakis got into a tank,” Trump says at the tank plant in Ohio. “He tanked when he got into the tank. … How would I look in a tank? OK? Yeah? … The helmet was bigger than he was, that was not good.”

Around 1,600 people have been secretly filmed in hotel rooms in South Korea, with the footage live-streamed online for paying customers to watch, police said Wednesday.

Two men have been arrested and another pair investigated in connection with the scandal, which involved 42 rooms in 30 accommodations in 10 cities around the country. Police said there was no indication the businesses were complicit in the scheme.

… Cameras were hidden inside digital TV boxes, wall sockets and hairdryer holders and the footage was streamed online, the Cyber Investigation Department at the National Police Agency said in a statement.

The site had more than 4,000 members, 97 of whom paid a $44.95 monthly fee to access extra features, such as the ability to replay certain live streams. Between November 2018 and this month, police said, the service brought in upwards of $6,000.

Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday defended President Donald Trump’s attacks on her husband George Conway saying he’s “a counterpuncher” and asserting that the president is free to respond when he’s accused of having a mental illness.

“He left it alone for months out of respect for me,” Conway, a senior Trump aide, told POLITICO in a brief telephone interview. “But you think he shouldn’t respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?”

“Don’t play psychiatrist any more than George should be,” she added. “You’re not a psychiatrist and he’s not, respectfully.”

A terrifying, previously unknown detail about last year’s Lion Air crash

As the Lion Air crew fought to control their diving Boeing Co. 737 Max 8, they got help from an unexpected source: an off-duty pilot who happened to be riding in the cockpit.

That extra pilot, who was seated in the cockpit jumpseat, correctly diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable a malfunctioning flight-control system and save the plane, according to two people familiar with Indonesia’s investigation.

The next day, under command of a different crew facing what investigators said was an identical malfunction, the jetliner crashed into the Java Sea killing all 189 aboard.

One of the arguments Bernie Sanders’ fans made during the 2016 Democratic primary was that he was more electable than Hillary Clinton. His favorable ratings with the general electorate were far higher than Hillary Clinton’s. Indeed, Sanders maintained fairly high favorable ratings with all voters as late as 2018.

Sanders’ popularity among all voters seems to be declining considerably in the last few months, however.

Our new CNN poll puts Sanders favorable rating at 46% compared to an unfavorable rating of 45% among registered voters. This is only the latest poll to have Sanders at basically even in his net favorability rating (favorable-unfavorable). A Quinnipiac University pollfrom late December gave the Vermont senator a net favorability of just +2 points. An average of all recent polls put Sanders’ net favorability at about -1 points.

Andrew Gillum is going to try to move Florida back into the Democratic column

Andrew Gillum has launched a Florida voter registration group dedicated to defeating President Donald Trump’s re-election chances in the nation’s largest swing state.

The former Tallahassee mayor and Democratic nominee for governor is expected to formally announce the effort today at a speech in Miami Gardens. One of the groups working with Gillum — Bring it Home Florida, named after his signature campaign phrase — was registered last week by his supporters with the state election division overseeing third-party voter registration organizations.

Meanwhile, the Florida Democratic Party says it will spend $2 million in the next year to register 200,000 voters ahead of next year’s presidential primary. Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Terrie Rizzo said the party has not “dedicated enough resources” to registering voters in recent years. There are currently 4.96 million registered Democrats in the state compared to 4.7 million Republicans and nearly 3.6 million voters with no party affiliation.

I am considering running in the 2020 Democratic primary. The goal will not be to win, but to bring a critique of American imperialism to the Democratic debate stage. The website (https://t.co/j5qZdJoH7S) is under construction. Official announcement will be in the coming days.

High stakes in the House of Commons. Theresa May wants a three month extension to Article 50. Any longer and the PM clearly hints she will quit.Mrs May goes to Brussels tomorrow to make her request in person. #BrexitChaos

George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success & angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!

The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scoured a handbook as they struggled to understand why the jet was lurching downwards, but ran out of time before it hit the water, three people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said.

Democrats regularly falling below 1 percent in the polls are scrambling to meet the other debate threshold: 65,000 individual donors

Hitting 65,000 has become a magic ticket for many of the party’s presidential candidates, who are struggling to rank in public polls given a field that already has 15 contenders, with several more waiting in the wings. The new criteria have proved to be a boon to lesser-known candidates seeking a national stage this summer and could create challenges for more-established politicians seeking to break away from the pack — with unpredictable repercussions for the party.

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg reached his 65,000 goal last week after a successful CNN town hall brought him a new wave of donors. Businessman Andrew Yang put a counter on his homepage to drive the online energy past 65,000 donors for his candidacy, which is based around the idea of giving every American adult $1,000 every month. (Buttigieg and Yang are the only two candidates who do not regularly register with clear support in national polls to claim that they’ve reached that mark.)

Aides to Marianne Williamson, a self-help guru, and former housing secretary Julián Castro say their campaigns are also on track to qualify.

“We need 65,000 individual contributions,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) pleaded after her own CNN town hall, in a hotel hallway video that now tops her Twitter page. She asked each of her donors to find at least 10 other people to chip in a dollar as well.

A powerful stand against hate and fear after the New Zealand mosque shooting

Islamic leaders have vowed to hold Friday prayer at Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch exactly one week after an armed terrorist gunned down 42 worshippers.

The Deans Ave mosque’s religious leader Imam Gamal Fouda, who survived New Zealand’s worst ever terror attack, said the move will show the world that Muslims, and all New Zealanders, will not bow down to terror.

“We are going to prayer here on Friday,” said Fouda today, speaking to the Herald at the cordon across the road from the mass murder scene.

“The majority of people, including myself, we decided to come and prayer close to our site. We will never forsake it to please those people who actually attacked us.”

A Republican senator “closely aligned” with Mitch McConnell claims he’s going to tell off Trump today for repeatedly insulting the late John McCain

Later today Sen. Johnny Isakson will call out President Trump for his continued disparagement of John McCain. The chairman of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee said in an exclusive interview on Tuesday that the service of any veteran, let alone McCain, should never be besmirched, that president’s comments “drive me crazy,” and that he plans to speak out at length on Wednesday.

… On Tuesday, Isakson told me he plans to deliver the promised whipping. “I want to do what I said that day on the floor of the senate,” he said [referring to a speech warning Trump in the days after McCain’s death]. “I just want to lay it on the line, that the country deserves better, the McCain family deserves better, I don’t care if he’s president of United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world. Nothing is more important than the integrity of the country and those who fought and risked their lives for all of us.”

As he hunted for a seasonal delicacy, Mohaned Salah Yasseen scanned the ground intently, searching for places where the soil is cracked and slightly raised — the telltale sign a desert truffle lies below.

So he failed to notice the two pickup trucks, driven by men in military uniforms, until they were almost upon him.

“They ordered me to get into the truck,” said Mr. Yasseen, a 31-year-old pharmacist. “I thought about saying no, but they were armed.”

As he climbed in, he became the latest victim in a new campaign by the Islamic State.

Since late January, they have been kidnapping and, in some cases, executing Iraqi truffle hunters, mostly in the deserts of western Anbar Province. The Iraqi security forces confirmed the kidnapping of 44 truffle hunters this year, and more have probably gone unreported.